Cricket needs Twenty20 says the $20m man

Sir Allen Stanford - cricket's richest man and a key player in deciding the future of the game - has predicted that Test matches will wither without continual financial nourishment from the 20-over game.

"Professional sport, unfortunately, is about money," said the Texan billionaire, "and Twenty20 is what is going to drive, commercially, the dollars in the door. You can no more do away with Test cricket and replace it with Twenty20 than you can say that Test cricket is the only thing out there. That would be stupid [because of Twenty20's financial support]."

Stanford's views count. Currently hosting the 20-over tournament in Antigua, which culminates in a $20m [£10m] challenge between England and his All Stars team on Saturday, he is a key ally of the England and Wales Cricket Board, which hopes the prize money will keep England's best players from defecting to the lucrative Indian Twenty20 leagues.

Stanford stressed he was not, however, hostile to Test cricket. "Both can co-exist. Maybe one is more for the purist, maybe one is more for the younger 'want to see it now, be entertained now' crowd."

The future of Test cricket had looked safe enough earlier yesterday, as the England captain, Kevin Pietersen, bemoaned the lack of excitement in the low-scoring matches played so far in Antigua.

"With the spectacle that it's going to be, you would expect to come here and have scores of 160 to 200," said Pietersen, whose batsmen laboured on a slow pitch in their first warm-up match. "But it is the same for both teams and it is who handles the conditions on the day," he added. "It's a little bit of a shame really but that is what we have got and we have to make the best of it."